"[T]he younger Mr. Biden named names, unleashing a profane tirade against a host of perceived enemies, including..."

"... the senior Biden aide Anita Dunn; the Democratic éminences grises David Axelrod and James Carville; the Obama administration alumni who built Crooked Media, a booming liberal podcast network; the CNN host Jake Tapper; and the actor George Clooney.... ... Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Clooney as 'a brand' and Mr. Carville as someone who 'hasn’t run a race in 40 years.' Mr. Axelrod, he said, 'had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.' The former Obama aides behind Crooked Media and its 'Pod Save America' flagship, he said, were 'four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago.' And he asserted that Ms. Dunn, who ran the White House press operation throughout most of Mr. Biden’s presidency, had made '$40 to $50 million' from the Democratic Party.... Mr. Biden saved perhaps his strongest venom for Mr. Tapper.... 'What influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news'..."

From "Hunter Biden Trashes Democrats He Saw as Betraying His Father/In a profane tirade, the former president’s son sought to settle scores with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, James Carville and George Clooney. Among others" (NYT).

I put the video up last night, in this post. There, I highlighted Hunter's assertion that his father's problem during his debate with Trump was the drug Ambien. What I'm highlighting in this second post is Hunter's naming and blaming a lot of Democrats. 

Responses from the Democrats Hunter named:

Axelrod: "Never have the words ‘no comment’ been more appropriate."

Carville: "[The Bidens] got into this frenzy that they were these people who were disrespected and that’s their whole culture."

Tommy Vietor, a “Pod Save America” co-host: "It’s good to see that Hunter has taken some time to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with." 

Biden's in trouble, and the solution could be... Anita Dunn!

I'm reading "Inside a Biden White House adrift/Amid a rolling series of calamities and sinking approval ratings, the president’s feeling lately is that he just can’t catch a break — and that angst is rippling through his party" (NBC News):

Speculation is churning that Biden could shake up the West Wing staff, although that’s not about to happen right away. Multiple people close to the White House said they’ve heard that chief of staff Ron Klain will depart at some point after the midterms, and one has heard him discuss leaving. Should Klain go, a potential successor is Anita Dunn, a White House adviser and Biden confidant whom he often turns to when his fortunes look bleak. Dunn began working at the White House at the start of the term, then left and returned in early May at Biden’s specific request. No woman or person of color has ever been the White House chief of staff since the position was created after World War II.

Anita Dunn. What I remember about her is that in 2009, she got into trouble for quoting Chairman Mao: "You know, you fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And in 2011, it was revealed that she said that the Obama White House "actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."

The idea that women will rescue Joe Biden is persistent and strange.

One day after the NYT publishes "Kenneth Starr, Who Tried to Bury Bill Clinton, Now Only Praises Him"...

... we learn — from Inside Higher Ed — that Starr is expected to resign from his job as president of Baylor University, where the Board of Regents has been considering firing him for looking the other way when the school's football players were accused of sexual assault and domestic violence.

There have also been a lot of reports that the board voted to fire Starr. 

Here's our discussion, yesterday, about the NYT article, which seemed framed to help Hillary Clinton by offering up the supposedly surprising news that Ken Starr is a fan Bill Clinton's. The Times downplayed Starr's current troubles, which undercut the value of his seeming admiration for Bill Clinton.

I didn't say this yesterday, but I think it was unfair to Starr to write that he "tried to bury Bill Clinton." Starr was appointed Independent Counsel to investigate the Clintons, beginning with the Whitewater matter and expanding into the death of Vince Foster and then various other matters — "the firing of White House Travel Office personnel, potential political abuse of confidential FBI files, Madison Guaranty, Rose Law Firm, Paula Jones law suit and... possible perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up President Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky."

Whatever criticisms he may deserve for going too deeply into these things, he was acting in the role of a prosecutor, under a charge from the 3-judge division that appointed him and subject to removal for good cause. One may be dismayed at all the things he turned up, but I don't see why he deserves to be seen as motivated by an intent to destroy Bill Clinton. He was a prosecutor, and if he were on a personal vendetta, why didn't Attorney General Janet Reno fire him?

By the way, Trump has brought up the old Vince Foster story, and there's some amazement that he's willing to sully himself with the sort of tawdry material that GOP candidates have traditionally left to others, as the NYT is talking about in its new article, "As Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Media Gets Its Wish":

[B]y personally broaching topics like Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions and the conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a Clinton White House aide, Donald J. Trump is...  defying the norms of presidential politics and fashioning his own outrageous style — one that has little use for a middleman, let alone usual ideas about dignity.

The Times observes that the Hillary campaign is trying to figure out how to interact with an opponent like this. It's much harder to decline to respond when material is purveyed by the GOP candidate himself and not just right-wing radio and websites. The Times quotes James Carville recommending no response at all.

Then it goes to Anita Dunn, who was once Obama's communications director. (This isn't in the Times, but let's not forget: She's the one who called the Obama White House "a genuinely hostile workplace to women.") Dunn told the Times that Hillary needs to figure out how to respond or Trump gets viewed as "winning the day" whenever he lobs one of his attacks.

And then here's the last sentence of the article:

Half-jokingly imagining Mr. Trump dredging up the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., she said, “We haven’t heard ‘David Koresh’ yet.”

I don't know why that "Half-jokingly" is there. I fully expect Trump to bring up the Waco siege, and there's nothing amusing about it at all.  

"All Stephanie [Cutter] wants is results."

"She is an old-school, take-no-prisoners political operative. Losing is not tolerated."

In her role as Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff during the 2008 campaign, Ms. Cutter (who signed on after Mrs. Obama’s widely publicized comment that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country”) is largely credited for turning the would-be first lady from a potential liability to an enormous asset....

In addition, Ms. Cutter helped develop “Let’s Move!,” Mrs. Obama’s childhood-obesity initiative, and prepared Sonia Sotomayor for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Ms. Cutter’s prep work involved not only peppering Ms. Sotomayor with sample questions and overseeing media coverage, but also taking on the more delicate task of asking Ms. Sotomayor to tone down her giant dangly earrings.

“She has an attention to detail that builds huge confidence on the part of the people she works for and, I say this parenthetically, especially women,” said Anita Dunn, Mr. Obama’s former White House communications director.

Women. Advancing. Right?

The NYT tries to figure out what portion of Barack Obama is Valerie Jarrett.

A fascinating long article by Jo Becker:

“She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House,” said one former senior White House official, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity.

“She’s there to try to promote what she understands to be what the president wants,” the former aide said. “Ultimately the president makes his own decisions. The question that is hard to get inside of, the black box, is whether she is really influencing him or merely executing decisions he’s made. That’s like asking, ‘Is the light on in the refrigerator when the door is closed?’ ”

Makes her sound like Karl Rove, right? But as the NYT puts it: "If Karl Rove was known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr. Obama’s spine."

“He’s got a real mess in the West Wing,” said one close presidential adviser. “Valerie is effectively the chief of staff, and he knows, but he doesn’t know. She’s almost like Nancy Reagan was with President Reagan, but more powerful.”...

It is not so much that she is Mr. Obama’s liberal id. Rather, her voice is often the one at the table reminding everyone of the president’s aspirational “first principles,” that he “didn’t just come to the White House to hold the office, but to make change,” [according to Anita Dunn, who was the president’s communications director].

Specifics: 1. Jarrett was responsible for encouraging Kathleen Sebelius to go ahead with the contraception mandate in the health insurance regulations; 2. She once "order[ed] a drink from a four-star general she mistook for a waiter"; 3. She snubbed George Soros and may be be responsible for his "largely sitting on the sidelines this presidential election," 4. She insulted Cornel West (after he whined about not getting invited to the inauguration), letting people know, as he put it: "one, I was crazy, and two, I was un-American."

#1 is the most important revelation, and the NYT begins and ends the article with it:

Obama defended with an argument that was used many years ago — lamely — to defend Ross Perot.

Oh, how I fulminated in 1992, when Ross Perot was challenged for not having women in his inner circle of advisors and he said:

But in terms of being influenced by women and being a minority, there they are right out there, my wife and my 4 beautiful daughters, and I just have 1 son, so he and I are surrounded by women, giving -- telling us what to do all the time.

My son John remembers, because we've watched the great documentary "The War Room" together many times, and when that part comes up, I've always gone into my rant that looks a lot like the rant I did over the new Ron Suskind book about Obama's inner circle when Anita Dunn tried to roll back her attack on Obama for the lack of women in his inner circle by saying "The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women... He values having strong women around him."

The Obama White House "actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."

Said former White House communications director Anita Dunn, as quoted a new book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" — written by a man, Ron Suskind — the Washington Post reports.

Dunn now rejects the term "hostile workplace,” and adds the typical PR bullshit evidence: “The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women... He values having strong women around him.”

In my experience, women who are vigilant about workplaces that are hostile to women hate that argument: A man has a strong wife at home, so he must not be opposed to the success of women in the workplace.

And, by the way, specifically, I'd say that Barack Obama has kept his wife in a distinctly subordinate role. Michelle Obama went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, and now she works on encouraging children to eat vegetables and get some exercise.

But... whatever... Anita Dunn... I always thought she was a bit of an idiot. She shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place. If she was initially overpromoted, it was a good thing that she got excluded. She shouldn't have been included.

But Suskind talked to other disincluded women. According to the Washington Post account of the book:

[W]omen occupied many of the West Wing’s senior positions, but felt outgunned and outmaneuvered by male colleagues such as former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Summers.

Obama, according to the book... failed to call on Romer after asking her male colleagues for their opinions. The snub prompted Romer to pass a note to Summers where she threatened to walk out of the dinner, according to the book....

The Obama White House has long been dogged by similar claims of exclusivity — his golf outings have been typically all-male affairs...

So... is there something sexist about the Obama administration? Seems like Suskind came up with a great angle for his book, but I'm skeptical. I think Obama may have been overenthusiastic about giving a lot of  positions to women, and perhaps those women really weren't as good as the men he surrounded himself with and really does need to rely on. In that case, he deserves credit for good judgment. But it is funny that he's not more concerned about the optics. Perhaps he assumes that he is especially appealing to women constituents and he doesn't need to do much to maintain that favor. It's the men he's in danger of losing. Time for another round of all-male, manly golf.

Is Obama now deliberately avoiding the term "czar"?

"Today the White House announced the President’s new White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, Howard Schmidt."

***

Last September on the White House website, Anita Dunn called out critics of the term "czar":

 ... Although some Members have asked serious questions around the makeup of the White House staff, the bulk of the noise you hear began first with partisan commentators, suggesting that this is somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous....

... Darrell Issa, a Republican from California and one of the leaders in calling for an investigation into the Obama Administration’s use of "czars", had to admit to Fox News that he had never raised any objections to the Bush Administration’s use of "czars". Many of these members who now decry the practice have called on Presidents in the past to appoint "czars" to coordinate activities within the government to address immediate challenges. What is clear is that all of this energy going into these attacks could be used to have a constructive conversation about bringing this country together to address our challenges moving forward – and it doesn’t take a "czar" to bring that about! Just some folks willing to act in good faith.

You can call people out or you can just stop doing nonessential things that open you to criticism. And when you're engaged in a grand enterprise of amassing power, calling your minions "czars" is unnecessary, to say the least.

Obama's White House boy's club.

Here's an article that is getting a lot of attention for pointing out that in 9 months in office, Obama has played golf more times than George W. Bush did in his first 2 years. But there's something even more interesting: Obama didn't include any women in these golf rounds until last weekend, at which time he golfed with a woman once.

Now, here's a NYT article the observation that the White House has a boy's club atmosphere:

Does the White House feel like a frat house?

The suspicion flared in recent weeks — and not for the first time — after President Obama was criticized by women’s advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting a high-level basketball game with no female players.

The president, after all, is an unabashed First Guy’s Guy....

He presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors....

Mr. Obama, in an interview with NBC on Wednesday, called the beef over basketball “bunk”... “I don’t think it sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever,” said the president, who often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home (where he is the only non-canine male).

Wow. Incredible.  If there is any serious feminism left in this country — by which I mean the kind of feminism we had back before the Clinton presidency — it would ream a man who sought credit for inclusiveness toward women by referring to the fact that he had a wife and daughters in his household.

[Senior adviser Valerie] Jarrett similarly rejected the notion that the West Wing had been overrun by Y chromosomes, saying such complaints were “a Washington perception that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.”

The evidence?

She cites the prominent women Mr. Obama has appointed to top positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Where has she been?

... and six other cabinet-level officials; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor...

She's over there in chambers, and nowhere near the Prez.

... the health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle...

Why don't we say "czarina"? We've got these new positions and the title you get is male-specific. It's as if were were calling the Secretary of State "Mr. Secretary."

... and the domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes. According to figures provided by the administration, there is a 50-50 gender split among White House employees.

Which makes it all the more striking that the atmosphere reads as so male:

[S]ome high-profile sectors of the White House — economics and national security, for instance — are filled with men and exude an unmistakable male vibe. Mr. Obama’s inner circle includes Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Emanuel and his senior adviser, David Axelrod (“The Boys,” as they are known to some female staff members).

Women in important White House jobs tend to be less visible than their colleagues, even as the administration is trying to elevate their profiles. (In the same week as the basketball game, Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, hosted a group of women reporters for an off-the-record meeting with Ms. Jarrett over chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.)

Did they share the recipes?

There is so much reason to try to create the impression that women are important that the truth of the exclusion of women must be even worse than it appears.

One Democratic media strategist says that while Mr. Obama does place women in important roles, his comfort level with staff members is not always perceived as equal.

“There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn’t have with the women,” said Tracy Sefl, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign who speaks regularly to some female aides in the administration.

This is exactly the problem feminists used to focus on.

Good for Sefl, going public like that and getting named. I would love to eavesdrop on conversations between Sefl and Hillary.

In interviews, five women who work in the White House or advised officials there described the culture with more of a collective eye-roll than any real sense of grievance or discomfort.

Well, what the hell happened to real sense? When did feminism lose its critical edge? (Answer: During the Clinton administration.)

One junior aide, who like the other women spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about appearing publicly critical, said that the “sports-fan thing at the White House” could become “annoying” and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating.

Annoying... mildly alienating....  The spirit of feminism is so diminished these days that women think of their own observations as insignificant and scarcely worth making any fuss about. Compare this to the times of vivid, vital feminism that followed a methodology of elevating and intensifying the importance of these seemingly small observations. Once there was conscience raising. The new methodology of dying feminism deserves to be called consciousness lowering.

And while this is not uncommon in any workplace, sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss.

Oh, good lord. That this needs to be pointed out again — modestly suggested — shows how far we have sunk. There was once biting criticism of the sexism inherent in workplace sports bonding.

Ben Finkenbinder, a junior press aide and scratch golfer, was recently invited into a foursome with Mr. Obama. (In records kept by Mark Knoller of CBS, the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women, though Mr. Knoller allows that the press office does not always release the names of every player. A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Friday that Mr. Obama planned to play this weekend with Ms. Barnes.)

Ha. This NYT — NYT — article was already in the works when the White House scrambled to produce a female golfer.

[Some] women in the administration say that any discussion of White House culture should account for how politics has long been dominated by men but is now more inclusive. Ms. Dunn... rejects the notion of a boys’ club. She calls the Obama administration “refreshingly un-self-conscious” about matters of equality, maybe to a point where they neglected the “optics” of the all-male basketball game.

Oh?! So maybe it's a little like the post-racial America we were supposed to get — but didn't get — after Obama was elected. It's the post-gender America. No one needs to notice who's male and who's female anymore. So the inner circle is all male? You're not supposed to even see it!

Ms. Dunn said that she recently hosted a baby shower for an administration official and that no men from the office were invited. She is comfortable with that — just as she is fine with never playing basketball with the president.

“That is just part of the culture here that I am excluded from,” she said. “And I don’t care.”

Consciousness lowering — it's so refreshing.

Now, if everyone would please dial down all the criticism and let Obama get on with his un-self-conscious guy's guy agenda, it will all work out just fine.

Don't worry your pretty little head.

I listen to a 17-minute Glenn Beck riff.

You know, I've never watched his show or paid attention to the various clips that float around, but I listened to this 17-minute Glenn Beck riff, mainly because I've been meaning to blog about this Anita Dunn/Mao business. I found Beck quite engaging and humorous and articulate in a low-key (yet excitable) way. He has some interesting locutions. (I liked "non-nefarious reasons.") He's a good TV character.

As for Anita Dunn... what's that thing she's doing with her tongue? Did she eat a lot of peanut butter before going up to do her speech? Man, that is unattractive. But as for what she said:

"And Mao Tse Tung said, 'You know, you fight your war, and I'll fight mine.' And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, OK?"

Okay.

"It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definitions define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."

And if killing millions of people is right for you, don't let anyone stop you. You have your own path...

I can think of some non-nefarious reasons for saying that. Dunn is a bit of an idiot, and though she is the White House communications director, she's not too good at communicating. She doesn't seem to know that things you say can be looked at in more ways than the one you intend. I wonder how long she'll be kept around. Is there a bus coming along that path of hers?

"Obama should be better than Cheney. But aides are not helping the president prevail in what ought to be an easy competition."

In The Nation, John Nichols slams the man he calls the "Whiner-in-Chief":

When Dick Cheney kept giving "exclusive" interviews to Fox "personalities," there were those of us who ridiculed both the personalities and the former vice president for going through the ridiculous exercise of lobbing softballs and swinging at them.... Cheney saw newspapers such as The New York Times and news channels such as CNN as little more than branches of his Democratic opposition.

When [White House communications director Anita] Dunn was asked whether the president refused to accept interview requests from Fox because the White House sees the network as "a wing of the Republican party," the communications director responded: "Is this why he did not appear? The answer is yes."

It's wrong of Obama to shun the media he perceives as oppositional, but it's even worse, Nichols says, "to try and 'whip' relatively like-minded writers and reporters into line." (Why did Nichols put "whip" in quotes? So we wouldn't picture Obama with an actual whip or because he really wanted to say "pussy-whip.")

[T]hat appears to be what the Obama team was trying to do with the silly "policing action" of having a White House "adviser," speaking on condition of anonymity, encourage liberal bloggers to "take off their pajamas" and get serious about politics...

The bloggers should also take the criticism as confirmation that they are right when they suggest that this administration is increasingly out of touch with the progressive base that secured Obama the Democratic nomination and ultimately propelled him to the White House.

The fact is that the results of the 2008 election did not reveal "a closely-divided country." Obama arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the most muscular mandate accorded any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide.

("Muscular mandate"... I love that.)

IN THE COMMENTS: t-man said:

How can they say he had a mandate when no one even knew what they were voting for?

I think he's doing exactly what he got a mandate to do: vagueness, dithering, pleasing without really doing anything. Give the man some credit! That's why I voted for him.

Anita Dunn, the White House communications director: "We’re going to treat [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent."

"As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Good lord, they really are "the biggest bunch of crybabies."

***

I'm giving this post my "Obama the Candidate" tag, which means that the man needs to step past his candidate mode and recognize that he is the President.